Task Force on the Undergraduate Academic Program collects almost 70 white papers from the community
Isaac Lock ’25: MIT needs “people that can navigate this increasingly complex moral, social, and political landscape”
The Task Force on the Undergraduate Academic Program (TFUAP) was established in February 2024 to evaluate the Institute’s undergraduate curriculum and requirements. These include the General Institute Requirements (GIRs), experiential learning, electives, and general pedagogy. TFUAP aims to produce a revised academic program by the end of the upcoming school year.
According to a 2018 article from The Tech, MIT has made certain courses compulsory since its inception in 1865, when freshmen were required to take free-hand drawing, military tactics, and German, along with more recognizable classes like chemistry or mechanics. In the mid-20th century, MIT expanded its focus on the humanities, arts, and social sciences, increasing the required number of HASS classes to the current eight.
The modern-day science core classes evolved from the 1964 Zacharias Report, which made mandatory two semesters of physics and calculus, one semester of chemistry, three electives, and one laboratory elective. Biology was later added as a requirement, and the writing requirement was replaced with “communication-intensive” classes. As of 2025, undergraduate students must take six core science classes, eight humanities classes, two restricted electives (REST), and one laboratory class.
In February 2024, the Task Force began soliciting the community for thoughts on the goals of an MIT education and opinions on the current undergraduate program. From this feedback and other data from the Registrar’s Office, peer institutions, and previous task forces, TFUAP created ten “learning” and five “process” goals for students. Examples include “critically analyzing values” and “carefully examining assumptions, data, information, and ideas.”
Professors Joel Voldman MS ’97 PhD ’01 (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) and Adam Martin (Biology) are the co-chairs of TFUAP. With Kate Weishaar, the Senior Program Coordinator in the Office of Experiential Learning, they wrote in a statement to The Tech that although they “did not cut any of the full goals we wrote as a group,” they did “omit aspects of goals that were suggested throughout the process if there was not a consensus among TFUAP members that those aspects were necessary for every graduate.”
In December, The Task Force called for members of the community to submit white papers that addressed these goals. In January, TFUAP held a workshop for writers to develop their papers. They received almost 70 papers from students, faculty, staff, and alumni. Of these, some proposed adding new classes or sets of classes, while others addressed pedagogical techniques or MIT-wide policies on scheduling, grading, and so on.
Several papers advocated for adding a new GIR subject in computer science or data science, given technological advances since the development of the original program. Others emphasized themes such as climate science and social impact. A few suggested students take classes on ethics, design, philosophy, or financial literacy.
Some papers, on the other hand, proposed reformulating the GIR model to lighten the burden on students. For instance, the “hub and spoke model” proposed by Professor Masha Elkin (Chemistry) would allow students to take one core class taught by a home department, then choose an elective from related departments, similar to 6.C01 (Modeling with Machine Learning) in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Both Professor Elizabeth Nolan PhD ’06 (Chemistry) and Dr. Sara Ellison PhD ’93 (Economics) authored papers on scheduling. Nolan’s paper asked to move the drop date earlier in the term, prohibit registration for multiple classes that meet at the same time, and consider creating a lunch break every day. Ellison advocated for standard block scheduling to make overlapping classes impossible.
In an email to The Tech, Ellison wrote that the “tremendous latitude” in scheduling classes “results in inefficient use of classroom space, inefficient use of students’ time (from partially overlapping classes), and difficulty for faculty who want to schedule large classes to minimize conflicts.” She added that students normalize “the practice of not attending lectures” when they sign up for overlapping classes. Ellison noted, “I have been arguing for a centralized class schedule for years to no avail.”
Voldman, Martin, and Weishaar shared in an email statement to The Tech that they were “super pleased to receive so many white papers.” In particular, they were surprised by the creative ideas addressing Learning Goal 1, which aims for students to develop soft skills like time management and self-advocacy. On this front, they highlighted ideas like “Executive Functioning for Pirates” and “Data-Driven Wellbeing and Learning.”
Caitlin Ogoe ’25 and Isaac Lock ’25 are the Task Force’s undergraduate members. Ogoe and Lock, who are members of FLI@MIT (First Generation and/or Low-income) and the Undergraduate Association, respectively, both felt that student groups are often limited in scope. Each joined TFUAP to make a meaningful difference in MIT’s educational system.
Ogoe feels that the issues facing MIT students are “two-pronged.” First, she wrote, “MIT is exhausting, and there are few safeguards that stop us as students from working ourselves to the bone.” As a result, she believes that the intensely high-achieving atmosphere “impacts students’ relationship with learning.” She noted, “MIT prides itself on intellectual curiosity, but gives students hardly any time to be truly intellectually curious.”
In addition, Ogoe finds that “teaching staff often feel stiffed by students who double book courses, don’t come to class, don’t participate in recitation, and seem to only be looking for the path of least resistance to an A.” However, she said, “If students are expected to show up, lectures should make it worth their time. If students need to commit quickly to a course, they need to be comfortable with their standing in the course.” She hopes that TFUAP will address these issues.
Lock added that since MIT attracts students who “can do great things and ought to have a sense of wonder, whimsy, and curiosity,” these people should be able to explore on their own, learn by trial and error, and find the educational and non-curricular complementary and rewarding.
Citing the “concerningly fast” evolution of technology and science, he wrote, “MIT can and should be trying to pump out people that aren’t just competent programmers, engineers, and scientists, but people that can navigate this increasingly complex moral, social, and political landscape.”
Martin, Voldman, and Weishaar were “surprised that no one submitted a white paper that totally reimagined the [undergraduate] academic program for our community.” Resonating this sentiment, Lock wrote, “Some papers were more radical than others, but nothing really knocked my socks off.”
TFUAP has started drafting an updated undergraduate program, which they hope to release to the community in the fall. After listening to feedback, they will refine the program and aim to produce a final plan for a faculty vote in the 2025–2026 school year.